starmark | IC Inbox | prismatica

[Immediately, reflexively, when Hierophant lets that first glimpse of him be seen, Star Platinum erupts into view, materializing behind Jotaro's shoulder with all the abrupt and unmistakable enthusiasm that isn't remotely close to showing on Jotaro's otherwise impassive face. There's something important to his, something that would be imbalanced if Star wasn't here, too, and so he is. He needs to be.

You can't love just part of a Stand user. You have to take all of them. You have to love their soul just as much as you love the rest of them.

Two hands, one solid flesh and one spectral violet, reach upward to catch Hierophant's tendril as it winds its way down off the side of the building, like pointing defiance to a sky overhead, like counting the stars one by one. But even though Star is taller, and his reach is more broad, it's Jotaro's hand that closes around Hierophant first, warm on cool, calloused on sleek, and brings the noodling length of it to his lips.]

Hey, bud.

[Kakyoin. His Kakyoin. He's learned by now that there are a thousand million universes scattered across the aether and in them there are a thousand million Joestars and their friends and their foes and their struggles and their woes, but this one is his, his Kakyoin, and he would know him anywhere.

In a broad expanse of a thousand million lives and lifetimes, he would know this one anywhere.]

Kakyoin. Please. I've made you wait long enough as it is.

[ It would be terribly undignified to leap off the roof. Quick, yes, and it’s suddenly vitally important that Jotaro be near him as soon as possible, but undignified. Hierophant reaches up, away from Jotaro’s lips to stroke his cheek. Wriggles and weaves his way between his fingers before ropes of him coil around him. Lift him slowly, carefully upward until it can lower him softly onto the roof.

And then he just stares.

The problem with this, with doing things this way, is that the wind’s been taken out of his sails somewhat as far as dramatic reunions go. It feels kind of silly, reacting to Jotaro’s return as if he’d only just learned about it. Like he hasn’t known he’s back for a while now. He’s had time to second guess. To decide that running into his arms is inadvisable on a roof and kind of stupid-looking besides.

And what the fuck is he supposed to say? Should he ask after him? Clearly he’s well enough. Ask after Dio? He wouldn’t be anywhere near this calm if he wasn’t dead. Should he be angry, should he yell and demand to know why Jotaro didn’t take him with him? There’s no point. He knows.

Somewhere in the mess of figuring out step one of this whole whatever the fuck this is, his arm reaches out. He touches Jotaro’s shoulder. His fingers trail down over his arm until they reach hand. He exhales, and he smiles, and he wraps his hand around Jotaro’s. ]

About a quarter of all species of mammals are just different kinds of bats.

[ If in doubt, trivia. ]

Yare yare, what the fuck...

[That day, perhaps Kakyoin will be amazed to discover that when Jotaro was saying "yare yare, what the fuck," what he meant was, "I love you."

And the truth is, in that moment Jotaro finally understands something that had long eluded him, too. At long last, it finally makes sense, how his mom can let his dad tour the world loving his music as much as he loves her, and how he can love her back just as much no matter how far away his career takes him.

It's because of this. It's that first moment when they see each other again, and it's like he'd never left.]

You haven't changed a bit.

[And with that, he drops Kakyoin's hand, because he can't hold his hand if he's going to catch him up in his arms instead, and stupidity and rooftops be damned, he's going to hold his boyfriend and spin him around in circles as the bullshit fairytale reunion he deserves.]

[ The thing about the spinning around thing is that having any part in making it happen would make him feel stupid and self-concious but having it happen at him is just- just correct. Just what should be happening. The way these things are meant to go. And maybe there have to be some allowances for his hatred of not being in control (Hierophant hovers about nervously in case this all goes wrong in a rooftop-related manner), but those are easily made. He can just hold on and let Jotaro spin the both of them around.

His arms are draped over Jotaro's shoulders by the time they're not spinning anymore. He'd be hanging by them if not for Jotaro taking his weight. He isn't hanging from them, which means that he can untangle one arm to reach for Jotaro's face instead. Let his spider fingers crawl up his cheek like frost. ]

We would have found you.

[ What he meant to say was that they were looking for him. They weren't just going to let him face whatever it was alone. He wasn't going to let Adrian resign himself to slumber and misery. Adrian wasn't going to let him resign himself to being a dead boy bested by Dio. It comes out wrong. Different. Correct. They would have found him, if he couldn't make it back himself. He says it with all the certainty that he says that there are so many different kinds of bat. ]

Sooner or later. We would have.

[The truth is, he doesn't even think twice about the possible ramifications of whirling around and around on a high rooftop with no guardrails and the not-insignificant weight of his boyfriend in his arms. Maybe he should. It'd be the sensible thing. But they've survived so much worse that the dangers of a possible misstep don't even register in a moment like this, and besides. Star would never let him fall, anyway.

(So he wills it, so it shall be. He won't fall. A natural law, right alongside gravity.)

But gradually he stops spinning, and the whole world is dizzy but looking at Kakyoin's face helps bring him back from the disorientation. The hand on his cheek is grounding, reassuring.

Kakyoin says, we would've found you, and Jotaro can't help but think, you just did.]

I need that.

[...is what he says instead, with the power of galaxies behind his eyes, starstruck as he gazes back at Kakyoin with all the adoration he has in him.]

Don't let me get lost. I need you.

We won't.

[ Hierophant settles down a little, less agitated now that he's not frantically trying to make sure that nobody goes flying. He unravels again, draped over both of their shoulders. Curls around the both of them.

And he shouldn't make promises he can't keep. And there are objectively places and times that he won't be able to follow Jotaro into, even if Adrian can. If he says what he wants to say, he'll be wrong and wrong is his third least favourite thing to be. ]

We'll always find you, every last time.

[ Maybe if he knew more he'd be able to appreciate the irony in being ready to move heaven and earth for Jotaro, the one person who's already done both. But he doesn't. Instead he just says things that are objectively wrong, but that don't feel like lies anymore. Just things that he hasn't made true yet. ]

[For a while, that's how they stay: wrapped up in each other, quiet, bound together with emerald tendrils and blanketed in the stillness all around them. For a while, it doesn't have to be anything more than that. It's right, just the way it is.

But eventually Jotaro shifts, just a little, and lifts his chin to press a kiss against Kakyoin's forehead, and breathes in slowly while words start to collect on his tongue.]

There's something — about what happened. When I went back, a thing I have to tell you.

[It's better than "we need to talk", at least. He's doing his best.

Of course, then something occurs to him, and he blurts out awkwardly: ]

— Dio's fucking dead. I promise. I killed him. It's nothing like that. I made sure.

I know.

[ And he does. He's known since Jotaro found his way back. The same way he knows they'd have found their way to him if he didn't. Dio is dead. Dio is gone. Dio is not a danger in any conceivable way, and they have all conceived of enough ways for Dio to be a danger that that cuts off an awful lot of possibilities for him.

Jotaro wouldn't be here if he would lead Dio back to them.

We waits for a moment, seeing if he can outlast his own impatience (and dissatisfaction with the fact that there is at least one thing he doesn't know, but not catastrophising. much.) long enough to get an extra kiss. It doesn't take long for the impatience to win. ]

What happened?

[What happened. Where does he even begin? Will it ruin something if he does? Will it ruin it if he doesn't?]

How... do you remember that night going?

[He doesn't clarify which night. He doesn't have to. For Kakyoin, there is only one night, and it's where he'll be forever.

It's where he selfishly wanted to keep Jotaro once, too. Where an awful part of Jotaro wanted to stay. That one night that changed them both, forever.

But maybe they weren't the ones that changed, anymore.]

Start with when we went into the building. The sun hadn't set yet. But then what?

[ That's- one hell of a question to use for setup.

Something changed. Something changed. Jotaro wouldn't need to ask unless if something changed. It's not as if either of them is likely to forget.

He doesn't quite dare to think about what that something might be. ]

When we entered the mansion you, your grandfather and I were brought into the lower levels. I faced a stand user there and lost, but you and your grandfather defeated him. [ He's just going to skip over the part where he way a doll and a giant nerd was looking up the back of his coat and rubbing his giant nasty face against his body. ] In the time we lost as a result of falling into the trap, Polnareff's group had eliminated an unnamed stand user who was manipulating the shape of the mansion and another whose stand consumed matter instantly. However, the latter had-

[ And that's the point where the dispassionate recitation of events fails him. He can't do that. He can't reduce Avdol to an asset lost. He can barely do that to Iggy. ]

-Polnareff was alone, when we next encountered him.

[For an instant, a stab of cold fear hits him in the pit of his stomach. What if — no, no, he's sure he changed it. He knows he did. He'd been careful, he's kept so much the same, just a few small changes that wouldn't make any difference but one —

It's just that they haven't caught up to Kakyoin yet, right?

He wasn't too late. He wasn't. It's just that it needs some time to catch up. That had to be it...

...right?

He doesn't — he doesn't want just any Kakyoin, just a heap of flesh with his face and his memories that he made and he placed because he wanted one to be there, he wants this one. He wants his Kakyoin.

But what if he made a mistake...?]

Yeah. He was alone.

[He sucks in a shuddering breath.]

But — where did he say Avdol was...?

I don't-

[ He doesn't want to say it. He can't say it. It's cruel to make him say it. His mouth presses thin and wide before it splits open like a fruit full of teeth in that way it always does when he's about to complain but the next sound isn't his voice.

It's a crack. High, almost melodic. He flinches, knocking the complaint out of him and making him coil more tightly around Jotaro. Crystal glass ringing with impact, echoing just slightly until the noise fades.

Where did Polnareff say that Avdol was?

(He didn't. He didn't say anything. He didn't need to, because Polnareff's silence is a language that only has the words for one answer.)

(Mr. Joestar has a fucking brick of a telephone that hasn't worked anywhere outside of the very centre of major cities. But they're in a major city, now. They're in an area affluent enough that people just have the signal that the phone uses as a luxury, so that they can show off their wealth. It works. It works and Polnareff is on the other end of it, speaking with the doctor who treated his own eyes. Va te faire cuire un oeuf, he doesn't have time for emergency treatment. He's just here because someone had to carry Avdol. He has to go back.) ]

-You have an altar for him.

[ He says, which isn't the same as saying that he's dead. He doesn't have an answer, not from that night. ]

Hey. Shhhh, hey.

[It's instinct, the way his hand moves to Kakyoin's hair, petting slowly through it with as much soothing care as he can muster. He could make this easy, he knows sadly. He could make this so easy, he could snap and it would be done and no one would ever know the difference, but if he does that, then how is he any different than any other would-be god shaping the world according to his own will?

He's not. He's something, sure, but he's not a god. He didn't remake the world to his own preference. He just — fixed it, is all. The surface tension is still there. He just tilted the glass.

That's why Kakyoin has to do this on his own, however much it hurts. Because it can't be him. It can't be him doing it, or it's all wrong.]

Yeah. I know.

[The altar is still there. He hasn't looked yet, to see whether it's changed or not. Maybe it won't. There's still plenty to mourn about that night, either way.]

He put Iggy in the curtain, right? Like a backpack. So he could carry them both at once. Like Galahad. "His strength was as the strength of ten because his heart was pure."

He-

[ There was a curtain drawn, keeping light from entering the hallway.

There was a curtain missing, and he had to stuff the mouthy little vampire into a sack to keep him from the sunlight.

Both of those things are true. He remembers both. He remembers neither in perfect detail. ]

-he wanted to keep the curtain, but the hospital threw it in the biological waste. With my uniform. They threw away my uniform.

[ He asks for his uniform back, because of course he does. They don't have it anymore. They had to throw it away, because it was ruined and covered with blood and viscera and the mostly-digested contents of a late breakfast and

and he asks for it back, some time after it's ruined and stripped from him and sent away for incineration.

That can't be right. He can't have asked for it back. Someone must have collected his things and found it missing. His parents, maybe. Or Jotaro and Mr. Joestar.

(They have to take out his earrings so that nothing gets caught on them. Jotaro takes them for safekeeping. Someone has to, or they'll get lost in all the transfers between wards and surgeries. Jotaro has them.

Is that why he's wearing studs? Should he ask for them back?) ]

-when did you tell me that they threw away my uniform?

After you woke up.

[His voice is soft, so very soft, and thick with an emotion that's deeper and sadder than just relief — because he remembers, of course, the other half of the fast-flipping coin, the side where he never told Kakyoin anything because there was no Kakyoin left to tell.

He could make it, he knows, so that he forgot too. So that it really was like it never happened, and no one would know any different.

But he won't. It's his job to remember. That's his responsibility, as the one who survived in both timelines.]

Your throat hurt from the tube they put down it. I was holding Hierophant's hand.

[He laughs weakly, and it wobbles.]

You wouldn't put him away. You kept him out the whole time. Out of spite, I told Polnareff. Remember...? He was trying to get me to go take a nap.

[ The crack rings out again. It isn't painless. But it's sharp, at least. Over quickly. Not like the tube. Not like Star's large, precise hands pinching closed arteries to keep him from bleeding out.

(Short-range, except when he needs to not be. Except when he's not acting on Jotaro's explicit instruction but instead upon something else. Except when he fetches things like comic books and cans of beer and boys snatched out of the air before what remains of their bodies break beyond repair against the skyline of Cairo) ]

Everyone was trying to get you to take a nap. I heard you talking to your grandmother, you know. People were trying to get you to take a nap in at least two different countries and four different languages.

[ Somehow, that's what sparks recognition. Jotaro refusing to take a damn nap. And he still remembers water. Still remembers twisted metal wrapping around him like a mockery of an embrace, still remembers thinking that the torn sheet metal carrying his weight was the most loving way he'd ever been held.

But only vaguely. Because he remembers flying backward but into Star's arms. He remembers slapping his hand desperately against Jotaro's watch because his breath was coming too jagged and red to speak. He remembers masks and tubes and concerned mumbling that seemed so far away that it couldn't possibly be about him and waking up every few hours to announce that it stops time. ]

What- did you need to tell me?

[ Somehow it doesn't seem obvious. Jotaro's just told him to make a list of things that happened. ]

I never did replace that watch.

[He brings his hand away from Kakyoin's hair, just long enough to put it between them and twist so that his sleeve rolls up — and there sits his Tag Heuer, its face shattered, stopped forever at 5:15. The casualty of that night in Cairo that Noriaki Kakyoin wasn't.

Before he can think better of it, he leans in close, lightly bumping his forehead against Kakyoin's from a pervasive need to be near him, while the truth and the sadness and the secrets come pouring out of him like water escaping from a broken tower.]

It's okay, if you don't understand why I need to tell you. Don't let it drive you crazy.

[He nudges back, just a fraction, and presses a kiss to Kakyoin's cheek, high on the apple of it near the scars still bitten into his skin.]

"I fixed it." That's what I needed to say. Everything else...can wait for later. We've got all the time in the world.

[ Noriaki Kakyoin likes things that he understands. He likes answers. Proof. He likes secret alters that he shouldn't know about and broken watches. Pieces of evidence. Things he can use. Truth-finding tools.

An altar to living people. A broken watch. Two answers to the same question. Two tools, each perfectly calibrated to lead to a different truth. ]

You know perfectly well that it's going to drive me crazy, Jotaro Kujo.

[ He is grumbling about not understanding. And he is alive. And maybe he is dead. But he isn't the horrible in-between thing that he had been for seventeen years before he met Jotaro. And it's hard to maintain grumbling when he's so easily mollified with closeness and delicate little kisses. ]

I wouldn't let you get away with it if I didn't love you, you know.

You love it when I drive you crazy. That's why I do it so often.

[If he were bolder, braver, he'd reach down and rest his hand against the place that he remembers, the hard green crystal jutting out from Kakyoin's belly with all his organs swimming around in it. Maybe it won't be there anymore, if he reaches for it. Maybe it still is, and it's just filling in different wounds that ran a terribly close call but still proved not to be fatal.

He didn't shape the world into an ideal. He didn't craft it to some whim or desire. He just — adjusted, here and there, little things to wipe away the horrible injustices of a too-cruel world.

No one got out of that night unscathed. But they all got out alive.]

Star's the one you should be thanking. Make sure you give him a kiss, too.

[He pauses, though, as that thought reminds him again of their separation, and at length he takes a tentative step toward bridging more of what might have happened while he was gone.]

Did — how bad...was it, while I was gone...?

Do I really need to tell you that we missed you?

[ He does, of course. He wants to say it, if nothing else. Not because it's important, just because he wants to be saying things to Jotaro at all possible times and it's a thing that he can say. He missed him. Something took him away and anything that wasn't immediately following felt like swimming through ice water. But he swam. He swam and he clung to Adrian and pulled his head above water.

(It's the cold that kills you, not the drowning.) ]

The Moon Knights are unhappy about everything. They've come to ask questions a few times, but they haven't come up with anything solid enough to act on yet. I- might have gagged him once or twice to keep him from confessing.

[ Might have. Because Adrian is a self-destructive mess who actually possesses a conscience and what use would they be if Jotaro needed them and he was in moon-jail. The admission jostles something free in his broken-glass insides. He holds tighter. Hides his face in Jotaro's neck. ]

He's been a mess. I wasn't expecting- I didn't think it'd be quite that bad. I told him- told him that you'd need him awake. Awake and well and not locked away and-

[ He trails off. And he doesn't know what he'd have been able to do if he didn't have that to say. ]

-we would have found you. That's how I know. Because we'd have found you or he'd have destroyed himself trying, and I wasn't letting him do that.

I asked because...I know he didn't just miss me.

[That was always the nightmare scenario, wasn't it? That Adrian would love him more and harder than he'd ever loved anyone before, and then something would happen, and it would be history repeating itself all over again. Like father, like son. Grief enough to raze a world in fire and blood — or just enough to seal himself up in a tiny dark box and wait the eternity it would take to die.

But he had Kakyoin. This time he had Kakyoin. And maybe it wasn't even enough, but —

But it was more than it could have been. Someone still there. Just like back in the beginning, holding his hand and keeping him awake and trying to remind him of a reason, any reason, to live.

Kakyoin isn't even the one who fell in love with him, and yet he stayed and kept Adrian's head above water. Not as a favor, not out of obligation, but...because. Just because. So that they'd both be there when he found his way home to them again.]

...Remember a while back, that time when we all changed our stuff around by mistake. You had Star and he had Hierophant and I was a vampire for a while. Remember...?

I remember. You thought it was going to fuck me up, that you were a vampire.

[ He says it like the idea is laughable. Like he hadn’t spent the week prior being fucked up by every little thing. It seems more distant, now. He remembers the taste of bile, having to sprint to the bathroom not long after arriving, but not what it could possibly have been about. A stomach bug, maybe. ]

And you offered some constructive criticism with regard to where I keep my blood.

Mmhm.

[He tucks in against Kakyoin, nuzzling gently against his hair for a minute or two. His hands, too, are moving lightly — touching, reminding, reaffirming. Whether that's for Kakyoin's benefit or his own, he isn't sure.]

I thought it would scare you to see me, so I tried to stay away. But you told me to come home. You said it once and I just barely managed to...resist, I guess. Then you said it again. And I came home.

[He closes his eyes, exhaling slowly like he's letting out a drag on the cigarettes he doesn't smoke anymore, but could without any health ramifications whatsoever, if he wanted.]

That's what love does to him. He can't help it. He can't...he can't stop. Even if he knows better. Even if it hurts him.

...I don't know what he's told you and what he hasn't, about...what he is. I don't know what you guys talk about when I'm not there. But — I just, what I'm trying to say is —

[...]

You did the right thing. Keeping him safe. Stopping him when he needed to be. However bad it got, whatever you had to do, if you stopped and thought — if you felt —

...You were right. Is. What I'm trying to say.

We don't really talk about it. About what he is. It pisses me off when we do, and I think that it pissing me of makes him feel like he needs to apologise for what he is or justify himself and that's the whole problem and- ugh.

[ He keeps being wrong. Grumble grumble grumble. But fine. Fine. That's not the point. The point is that something physiological inside Adrian makes him experience everything with much more intensity than anyone was prepared for. ]

I don't know the details, but I know it was hurting him. And I was scared, I suppose. That he'd do something stupid. That he'd run up to the nearest Moon Knight and demand to be locked up for that whole mess. Or that we'd go to sleep and I'd wake up and he wouldn't.

It's not- I'm not saying it was trouble, or that I mind it. I was just- It was hurting him. And there wasn't anything I could do.

Yeah, I know. I do. It's — easy to get scared. When he's like that.

[Because he remembers, of course, when Adrian disappeared. When he came back with welts in his flesh and guilt in his eyes. How he'd hidden himself and begged for space that Jotaro ached to give. How he'd blamed himself for disloyalty when he'd been the one most blameless of anyone.]

He wants someone to love him like you wanted someone to see Hierophant.

[He closes his eyes, nuzzling down into Kakyoin's hair again.]

But you kept him awake. Not just anybody could've. It wasn't just the things you did, Nori. Some of it — is because it was you doing them.

IC Inbox | prismatica

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insert disclaimer about rendering this non-canon if alba isn't on board here

naturellement

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